Are monsters born or do we create them?

Film noir based on a true story of a legendary serial killer Petr Kuerten.

Between February 1929 and October 1931 Peter Kuerten has brutally murdered eight people and attacked many others. He has killed men, women, children and animals, anything that crossed his path. He has spread the same panic as once Jack the Ripper did in London. Now, this brutal sadist has voluntarily given himself to the police.

A young ambitious lawyer Justus Wehner is assigned to defend the killer. Wehner is certain that Kuerten suffers from a severe mental disorder and decides to prove Peter Kuerten is insane. The mind fight between the righteous lawyer and an intelligent monster begins.

The deeper Wehner sinks into Kuerten’s psyche the lesser control over the case he gains. Wehner also meets Kurten's wife Marie, a lady with a dark past, who´s role in the case is more than mysterious. Kuerten and Marie start to feast on Wehner’s soul.

Wehner burns the bridges to his old life, almost kills one of his witnesses and finally forces Marie into suicide. In the final trial, Kuerten is claimed – Normal. Wehner loses the case as well as his innocence, believes and carrier. Peter Kurten is now to become the new Messiah of horror who will lead the people into a new age. Into an age of fascism when insanity will become normal for everyone.

CERN or The Factory For the Absolute is a documentary film about the Large Hadron Collider in the world (LHC), which is located under the French - Swiss border. With the help of this accelerator the scientists want to simulate the situation shortly after the so called Big Bang. As a result they hope to get basic information about the structure of mass and get to know the last secrets of the universe. On the background of the first LHC beam injection in September 2008, we take a closer look at many serious questions to be explored. At first, the historical introduction of the CERN institution, explanation of the experiments and their expected results and introduce the technological severity of the project. Of course we also discuss the question of possible risks of these activities that are reigned by human hybris. This unique documentary film is Jan V. Sacher’s Thesis film from the documentary department at Pragues’ FAMU.

After having been one of the most successful film directors in Europe in the nineteen sixties, Vojtěch Jasný (*1925), lives now forgotten by many in a small apartment in New York. His life and filmmaking are inseparable and in LIFE AND FILM Jasný himself, from his home in New York and through the visits to his old friends, will recount his own story, from the Nazi invasion in Czechoslovakia to the Soviet invasion, subsequent exile and his arrival to New York years later. In filmmaking he lived success and got to live and work with the most internationally important filmmakers, musicians and writers of the time.

Even if his constant social and political compromise obliged him to exile and made him suffer three KGB attacks against his life, he always kept faithful to his believes, even if that took him to oblivion. “I never went for money, I always went for friends and for what I think is fair and truthful,” says Jasnýh, who still, at his age, keeps making films: “film is my message and I will do it until I die, when my job is done my time to go will arrive.”

Spanish - Czech coproduction (Sonora Estudios - Axman Production)

Documentary film about an unofficial social movement of Cuban women who are under strict surveillance of Castro’s regime. Those women are wives, mothers and sisters of political prisoners. Their husbands, fathers or bothers have been imprisoned for years because; they in this or that way expressed their doubt considering political leaders and system in Cuba. In most cases they signed petition for more freedom and multi-party system in Cuba or they wrote critical newspaper article etc. At the moment movement has some 60 active women members. The only common thing that they manage to do together is the Sunday mass. They do the protest walk after the mass and walk down the Avenue in Miramar (quarter of La Habana) all dressed in white with the pink flowers in their hands. Film depicts 12 the most important Damas: their dreams, their fight, their everyday life, their families and their political activities…

Its almost unbelievable how little we know about the situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina these days and how many model examples of different social-political probes we can find there.

„Never Been Better“ is satirical – searching probe, kind of a road-movie along the „past“ country of the director herself. This film should a personal view on a harassed country, whose problem streak through the destiny of the director and where many other interesting stories of ordinary people appear.

Did you ever wish to start again?

It’s April the 1st and Sylvia has made a fatal error. Abandoned by her boyfriend she sets out to the streets of Prague to win his love back. Overcoming one obstacle after another she heads toward a final collision. This day she’d rather start all over again.

A tragi-comedy about a young and successful shoe shop owner. His career is going very well, but everything is about to change when a barefoot man enters his shoe shop.

For thirty years Slavek has guarded a public toilet in the centre of Prague. He has repeatedly tried to get together with the toilet women on the other side, but always had a bad luck. One morning his boss informs him that a new woman is coming and he orders Slavek to let her be. But even though Slavek intends to hold back, he is soon back on the trail of the toilet woman.

Czech - Icelandic - Estonian coproduction

"Trace of Spain" is the name of the Postcard from the Czech Republic made for the European Film Awards ceremony.

A North Korean diplomat defects to the South during the Cold War. South Koreans have their suspicions whether he is an actual defector or a double agent.

A Will to Dance is a story about Margit, an elderly Jewish lady from Prague, who visits places that were important landmarks in her life, and reconstructs her life story for the first time in front of her daughter and granddaughter. The relationship between the three generations is put under trial as a result of her story. It is a story about forbidden love, between Jewish Margit and Oswalt, a soldier in the German Wehrmacht in WWII. It is a story about marriage, love, and secrets hidden from the family because of the threat of hostile authorities.